Highway
by Silver-Serval
Summary: Life's like a road that you travel on. Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long. PeinOc.


Highway

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the stories I write and the characters I create.

Summary: Life's like a road that you travel one. Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long. PeinOc

_Phase One: Highways_

-·¤†¤·-  
_Life's like a road that you travel on  
there's one day here and the next day gone  
Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand  
Sometimes you turn your back to the wind  
_-·¤†¤·-

My life was always simple, in my words. I was a mere teen when I was roughly shoved into the position of ANBU captain. Young and inexperience, I made mistakes that I'd never expected to have made. Perhaps had I gotten more training, my life would not have turned into such a highway...

I suppose my life took it's first downward pull when my brother, Kurimuson Uteki, the only one who cared for this forsaken scrap of girl, left on a trip to Amegakure. He should only be gone a few weeks, Tsuiraku, the Sandaime had promised me coaxingly, but as the months turned into months, I knew that he'd be gone for a long time.

That had been the first blow...

Blow number two came in the form of my birthday. I had been six when he left, nearly seven. Lucky seven. On my birthday. Two days after I celebrated Christmas at the house of my blond friend, I received a letter from my brother.

Kurimuson was on the run, in hiding because the other town's ninja had discovered and then captured then. On Christmas day, he'd finally escaped, but now he was unable to return home. They were tracking him, he said. And he mentioned that if the carrier bird managed to find it's way home without being killed, he said that he'd loved me.

I had noted with unhidden sadness that my beloved elder brother had used past tense in his writing... Almost as if he were already dead... I closed the letter, sticking it on the head board of my bed. And that was how I spent my birthday. In mourning and apprehension of the looming Shinigami that threatened my brother.

He never did return home, and though I certainly expected it, I was not prepared for the ninja that appeared at my home, ordering me to report immediately to the Hokage's office.

I arrived to see the Sandaime and a young man hunched in the corner, leaning heavily against the young man I'd come to know as Hatake Kakashi-san, the man who'd periodically cared for me in my brother's absence.

My brother was dead, Kakashi-san had found him drooped against a tree just outside the gates, an unsent letter in his hands.

After my brother's death, my mind became practically focused on my brother - how I wanted to please him, how I wanted to avenge him. But I knew not why, or how, my brother had died. Eventually, though, I would find out. A rising star was never kept in silence... And as soon as I knew who, if it was a person, had killed him, I'd go and kill_ them_.

I entered the ninja academy, two years early. The other kunoichi envied me and looked up to me, the strongest, most determined female rookie in as many as a hundred years.

The boys wanted me, but I was repusled by them. I was somewhat scared at their determination to beat me, so I soared higher, practiced more, and struggled vainly again the clawing hands at my ankles, kicking at their faces only when I had to.

At age 11, I had managed to prove my worth, passing into the sheepish chunin-level rank. Less than a year later, I was a jonin, and only three months later, after my first A-ranked mission, I was passed into ANBU rank.

When I was thirteen, the blond boy I had spent my Christmas days with was just struggling to be a genin, and I was soaring high among the Black Ops that has so willingly accepted me. By this time, my determination had sent me on more A- and S-ranked mission than people twice my age.

But I was tired of my life and wished for an end. I t was only natural for me to die...

One night, after I had just returned from a mission of peace from Sunagakure, I gave up, deciding to kill myself.

Now, don't even think of it _that way_. No, I mean... Think in a literal sense.

The pale, emotionless, scrawny that everyone knew to be Tsuiraku Uteki would die, and someone new and unheard of would rule the night.

With a demented chuckle, Tsuiraku died, and Akrun Rune was born.

-·¤†¤·-

I was seventeen, stalking the woods after my newest prey. He would die soon. His body would lie cold and silent upon the forest floor. And I would be pleased.

Drawing three shuriken for each hand, I waited one brief second, the let fly.

A scream!

I darted forward to watch my prey leap into the air, a bloody stump where his left hand lay,, bleeding and twitching like a dying thing.

"Gross," I muttered, picking up the severed limb. Suddenly, something caught my attention. A ring sparkled dimly from the pinky finger. Pulling it from the severed hand, I pul it on my own, chuckling darkly.

"'The Void', eh? Fitting." And with a chuckled, I flung the hand into the woods, leaping off to where my home was, hidden away within the unseeable cave that I called 'Void'.

When I arrived, three figures stood in the opening, watching me with dark, nearly transluscent eyes that you could only barely see form beneath the rim of their hats.

"Tsuiraku Uteki, or should I say Akrun Rune... I'm afraid we need to talk."

Crap... Looked like my highway had just gotten a little bumpy.

* * *

Well? What'd you think? Who do you think is there? Feedback is loved, Flames are usually laughed at and/or ignored.


End file.
